mailed payment too soon

Mar 21, 2020 Last reply: 6 years ago 2 Replies

I owed money this year on my return, $2000, and couldn't file electronically. So I did my return the old-fashioned way and mailed the return and a check earlier this week to make sure they got it in plenty of time. Yes, you read that right. I mailed it earlier this week right before I learned that the tax deadline was extended by three months to July. Now I could kick myself for not waiting just a little bit longer to drop that thing in the mail.



Is there anything simple I can do to get the IRS not to process this until July? Yes, I know I can put a stop payment on the check, but that seems pretty extreme, and I don't want the IRS to get riled up by having my check bounce. And yes, I know the lost interest on $2000 for three months isn't much. Maybe $5 to $8 at most. And there's even the point that the checks the government will be mailing out might even be enough to compensate for the $2000. It's really more the principle of the thing than anything else. Short of a stop-payment, is there anything I can do to get them to hold the charge until July?


You could put a stop on the check. According to the IRS they won't charge you a penalty for a stopped check as opposed to one returned for insufficient funds.

I don't know that I would recommend doing that, though.

Money market mutual fund rates are less than 1.5% now and will plummet to near zero over the next two months due to recent Federal Reserve actions. The amount of (fully taxable) interest you are giving up is truly de minimis. My bank charges a large enough stop payment fee to make that option economically irrational. I see an insignificant upside and an unknown downside to trying to delay the payment you have already mailed.

If you want to channel your irritation at paying the IRS too early into productive action, I suggest you investigate the IRS on-line payment options. Even when you mail them a paper return, you can pay on-line. I use the EFTPS service and like it a lot (admittedly the one-time enrollment process is slow and annoying) but a lot of people like the Direct Pay option instead. When the tax payment deadline was extended, I logged into my EFTPS account and changed my scheduled 2019 tax return payment from April 15 to July 15.

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